


Anything Goes

by st_aurafina



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Cole Porter Songs, Drunkenness, F/F, Gin - Freeform, Ladies in Top Hats, Prohibition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 16:30:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17471030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/st_aurafina/pseuds/st_aurafina
Summary: It's the 1920's and the Doctor wonders how this new body manages gin.





	Anything Goes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nenya_kanadka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nenya_kanadka/gifts).



> Thank you to lilacsigil for the beta.

The Doctor was worried when she pushed open the TARDIS doors to see white walled tires on cars, straw boaters on men and shingled hair on women. The 1920's could be chancy. Things changed so fast that a right turn instead of a left could mangle the time stream in ways that weren't funny. Ways that even she would find difficult to fix. 

She stuck her hand out the door, palm upwards, testing the atmosphere. 

"What's the matter?" Graham said. He and Yaz crowded against her back trying to see out, while Ryan, always the innovator, crouched down and peered round her hip. "You made of sugar? Frightened of a spot of rain?" 

"Frightened of falling stockbrokers, more like," she said. "But I think we're okay. Winds light to variable, with a maximum of 1927. Little bit early for Daleks and the Great Depression."

"Still in Prohibition," said Graham. "But that never stopped anyone." 

Yaz squeezed the Doctor's shoulder. "We can dress up!!" she said, delighted by the idea. 

The Doctor grinned, shoved her hands in her pockets and turned out her toes. "I'm good – androgyny is all the rage– but you go wild. Rouge your knees and roll your stockings down." 

"Why would you rouge your knees?" Ryan asked as Yaz towed him off to the room that currently served as a wardrobe.

Graham laughed then followed, singing the chorus. 

They landed in the middle of an alien crisis, because of course they did, but once it was sorted there was a party with a barman and a piano. The Doctor thought this was exactly the right time to experiment with this new body and bathtub gin. 

"Hanky Panky," said the barman and slid a glass down the counter.

"No thanks, but I'll have the drink," she said and took a swig. Gin, vermouth and a touch of carbolic soap. That was the 1920's for you. After a couple of sips, her head started to swim. 

"Whoops! Seems I'm a bit of a lightweight!" She put the glass down and leaned her back against the bar to survey the room. 

Ryan, dressed in top hat and tails, valiantly tried to Charleston, with predictable results, though the bright young things assisting him seemed impressed with his ability to trip on his own toes.

On the makeshift stage, Graham – with more than one gin fizz in his system – risked the fabric of time and space encouraging the pianist into Cole Porter songs that didn't exist yet. 

"Oy, Graham," the Doctor called to him. "You can't Begin the Beguine for another…" Numbers didn't want to behave inside her head so she counted on her fingers. "Eight years!" 

Graham raised a glass to her, leaning against the piano like he was born to be on the stage. "Sorry, Doc! It was a request!" 

"A request?" the Doctor said. A feeling of suspicion began to penetrate the pleasant cloud of swimminess from the gin. "Where's Yaz?" she said. Nobody answered her, so she pushed into the crowd. 

From somewhere in the dark, she heard a woman softly singing, "What moments divine, what raptures serene." 

"I know that voice," the Doctor muttered, elbowing through a conga line towards the shadowy corner of the room.

Yaz was easy to spot even in the low light of the speakeasy, thanks to her shimmering gold dress. She sat perched atop a woman's thigh, her own legs neatly crossed. The other woman wore trousers but incredibly high-heeled shoes and she had one shirt-clad arm curled round Yaz's waist. The Doctor had an unexpected urge to scoop Yaz up and drag her away. That was weird. What was that feeling? She stopped still to think about it, and Yaz spotted her through the crowd. 

"Doctor!" she said, delighted. "Come and meet River!" 

The Doctor sighed as the floor seemed to shift beneath her. Surely it wasn't that much gin? So that's how it was going to be, in this new body. Jealous and a thimble-guts. Wonderful. 

"Come on over, sweetie," said River, and patted her other knee. "There's room enough for two. Especially when you're so… petite."

The Doctor plonked her behind down on River's other thigh. "I'm not petite. I mean, I've been more petite. In past… times." Thimble-guts, jealous and tongue-tied, then. She had forgotten how beautiful River was. No, that wasn't right. Maybe it was that this body had never felt River's presence wash over her. Or perhaps it was the gin. 

Yaz reached out to touch her face. "You're blushing," she said, amazed. 

"Blame the Hanky Panky," the Doctor muttered. 

River laughed and slipped her other arm around the Doctor's waist. "You always do, darling," she said. Despite her teasing words, she pulled the Doctor close to hug her, and grudgingly the Doctor let her. 

"You know each other, then?" Yaz said. 

River smiled, and twirled a finger through the Doctor's hair. "We do," she said. "We have for such a long time." She wore a tuxedo, and it looked ridiculously good on her, the bow tie hanging loose around her neck, her hair smoothed back like a man's.

"River's my wife," said the Doctor. Better just to say it, really. Maybe she should consider a mantelpiece or something in the TARDIS. Photographs and so on. It saved on explanations that she always seemed to forget. 

Yaz's face was a picture. "Oh," she said. 

"Oh," said River, with an altogether different inflection. "Oh, sweetheart," she said to Yaz, whose spine had stiffened. "It's not like that, not for us. Maybe for you?" She offered the question without judgement, stroking Yaz's hair, gentle in a way that the Doctor hadn't seen from River. It was fascinating. Beguiling, even.

"I don't know," Yaz said. "I didn't realise I needed an opinion on monogamy." 

"You don't," the Doctor said, quickly. "I'm sorry, I should have explained, I should have…" 

Yaz took her hand, enmeshed their fingers. "I'm forming an opinion now, okay? Don't panic." 

The Doctor scoffed. "I never panic," she said. "It's not in my nature." 

Yaz and River laughed at the same time, then looked at each other and laughed again. The awkwardness passed. Time was odd that way, the Doctor remembered. Only absolute in the moment, always reforming and changing in the past or future. 

Later they danced, the three of them, River holding the Doctor's waist, Yaz caught between their entangled arms. Yaz's fingers were warm on the Doctor's wrists, and she wore River's top hat over her golden headband.

"This is actually quite a good moment, as moments go," the Doctor said out loud. "Even if it's only absolute in the now, I am very pleased to be here while it happens." 

Ryan danced past at the head of the conga line and Yaz smiled dreamily. She pushed the brim of River's top hat to the back of her head so she could kiss the Doctor. The Doctor slipped her fingers into Yaz's hair, warm and thick, and felt the top hat fall to the ground, but she was kissing Yaz and in this moment, she didn't care about anything else. 

"You do something to me," sang Graham, his voice soft and only slightly anachronistic. "Something that simply mystifies me."

"I certainly do," said River and picked up the hat. She spun it down her arm with a dapper twist, popped it onto her own head then gathered the two of them up for another round.


End file.
